Logan city officials are considering details for a rezone allowing more residential units in downtown Logan. The proposed rezoning plan applies to properties on Logan Main Street between 200 South and 500 North.
Re-zoned areas would be categorized as either Town Center 1 or Town Center 2. The designations allow for higher density housing around the city center, and lower density housing in the downtown area further north.
The planning commission proposed 1.5 parking stalls per single bedroom or studio unit in the Town Center 1 zoning, with no shared parking. For the Town Center 2 designation, they proposed 2 stalls per unit regardless of size, with shared parking limited to making up 50 percent of the requirement.
Shared parking allows businesses or facilities with complimentary parking needs to make a formal agreement to share parking stalls.
“Some of these areas are going to be presumably designed for people theoretically who would ride their bikes more, walk more, take public transportation, therefore need fewer vehicles, therefore we need fewer parking stalls. And that's great if that really happened,” said Councilmember Herm Olsen.
Olsen wants to ensure the parking struggles facing people living in and around the campus residential zone are not replicated downtown.
“I know that thought that we don’t want an entirely paved over downtown is a useful notion,” Olsen said. “But the alternative it seems to me, is that we have less parking downtown and we end up with a bad situation where there is inadequate parking.”
Council member Amy Anderson said people are sensible and if they have more vehicles than a unit can accommodate, they won’t rent the unit.
“If they need three cars and a boat, you wouldn’t be living in downtown Logan,” Anderson said.
The city council members have not voted on official requirements yet, but are leaning towards keeping the shared parking percentage low, with a requirement of visitor parking spaces.
